We are seeking to appoint a three-year Marie Curie Trainee to complete a PhD research project in the Research Department of Speech Hearing and Phonetic Sciences at UCL, commencing no later than 1 January 2013.

The post-holder will complete a project under the supervision of Dr. Paul Iverson, Prof. Valerie Hazan and Dr. María Luisa García Lecumberri (University of the Basque Country, Spain), which will examine how speakers and listeners modify their phonetic perception and production during speech communication, particularly among second-language learners. The post-holder will have some scope to adapt the project based on their interests.

The post-holder will be a member of the FP7 Marie Curie Initial Training Network Investigating Speech Processing In Realistic Environments (INSPIRE) which comprises 10 European research institutes and 7 associated partners, and has the aim of training researchers to investigate how people recognise speech in real life under a wide range of conditions that are "non-optimal" relative to the controlled conditions in laboratory experiments. The Research Department of Speech Hearing and Phonetic Sciences is one of the largest groupings of researchers in this field in the UK, and is part of the Division of Psychology and Language Sciences within the newly formed Brain Sciences Faculty of UCL. The project will be based at UCL, but the post-holder will also be required to undertake some work and travel in other countries within the INSPIRE network.

Key RequirementsApplicants must be eligible to work in the UK but should not have resided or performed their main research activity in the UK for more than 12 months within the 3 years immediately preceding the start date. Applicants must be within four years (full-time equivalent) of the end of the degree which would formally entitle them to embark on a doctoral degree either in their home country or in the UK. Applicants, by the start of the post, must hold an undergraduate or masters degree in a relevant discipline (e.g., Psychology, Speech and Hearing Science, Linguistics, or Electrical Engineering) that is equivalent to a 1st class or 2:1 standard in the UK system.